We just received our first personal Geocoin and are about to set it free onto the world. A Geocoin is an item that travels from Geocache to Geocache. People are supposed to take it from a cache, and place it into another one. Through the geocaching.com website you can track the progress of the coin, and see where it ends up.

We’re back in St Croix and noticed there are at least 10 new geocaches this year. For those that don’t know, a geocache is sort of a treasure hunt using a GPS. You get a GPS location and get there any way you can to find the treasure. Then you take something from the treasure box, and leave something of your own. It’s great fun.

One of the new geocaches is not that far from the house we rent. Or at least, not when measured in a direct line. Walking it is quite a different matter, as it includes two very steep hills that are pretty difficult to walk in the full sun. But we decided to do it anyways, and had a very nice afternoon. It took us three hours to complete the hike, find the cache, and walk back, but it was well worth it as the views during this hike are spectacular. Now on to the next cache!

Read on for some images..

As if we didn’t have enough hobbies, Julie and I have started to do geo caching. It’s actually a great way to get some exercise and see areas you otherwise probably wouldn’t visit. The object is to find a treasure that’s been hidden. You find it by following GPS coordinates towards a location. Sometimes the caches are easy to find, somethings quite difficult. You then take something out of the cache, and put something back in yourself.

You can do geocaching all over the world. Probably within a few miles of everyone reading this post there is at least 1 cache. Here on St Croix there are about 10 caches, and we’ve found 5 so far. One turned out to be unreachable as the area it’s in was flooded after the last hurricane. Maybe if I take my dive gear out!

Finding the caches turned out to be a lot of fun. One was right near our dive shop. Literally a few steps from it. We never knew it was there. Another was on the highest peak of St. Croix and was pretty hard to reach as there was no real path. We had to hike through dense forest. The photo was taken during our last hike. We had to walk about 2 miles over hills, past deserted beaches, through dense grass, and finally we found it near a beautiful little lagoon with several pelicans flying around. Just perfect.